When Kronos went out and we recognized what an effect the cyber-attack would have on our hospital’s payroll system, SHARE advocated for UMass Memorial to offer advances in pay to help offset any pay you might be temporarily shorted. (Ultimately, the hospital is required to ensure everyone’s pay is made whole, as described here.) The hospital has since put an Advance Pay system in place.
In case you missed it, we’ve reprinted UMass Memorial’s announcement describing the Kronos Pay Advancement System and how it works at the bottom of this post. Here are a few additional things you should know:
The advance will be taxed like regular pay, not the IRS bonus rate. (However, if you opt for the $2000, you might pay a higher tax rate because it looks like you are getting paid that amount in a week and make $100K in the year. The member would get any extra tax taken back out when they file their taxes for 2022.)
401K will be taken out of advance checks. The problem is, if you elect 401K deductions, you get the hospital match. If they don’t take it out, then you lose out on the match. You won’t end up “whole” for the year, since that advance is taking the place of your pay.
If someone puts in for the advance because they missed a paycheck, and their name is at the top of the list to get a fix, payroll may reach out to them to ask them if they want just the fix instead, or if they want both.
Managers do not have access to the specific question of “did this person ask for an advance”. They are aware of the compensation of their employees in summary for the month. Given that the last month has adjustments for thousands and future months will continue to have many more adjustments as well, we are told it will be nearly impossible for the manager to differentiate an advance from a correction.
From UMass Memorial
As mentioned in Dr. Dickson’s memo on January 14, 2022, we are establishing a temporary pay advancement program to help those caregivers who have experienced a financial hardship from being significantly underpaid or not paid at all due to the Kronos outage.
Caregivers wishing to access this program should fill out the Kronos Advance Form. You don’t need to be logged in to the UMass Memorial network to access this. Using this form will enable us to process your request more quickly.
You can also access and submit the form by:
Scanning the QR code with your phone
Scanning a completed paper form or taking a picture of it and emailing it to kronosincident@umassmemorial.org.
This advance is a lump sum payment, subject to applicable payroll taxes and deductions, and will be paid via direct deposit within seven (7) business days after completion of the form. Advances are available in either $500.00, $1,000.00 or $2,000.00 gross amounts. Only one request per caregiver will be paid. If, after the Kronos system is fully restored, UMass Memorial finds you were overpaid for hours you did not work, you will be responsible for reimbursing UMass Memorial for any overage, which will be done in equal portions over the course of future payroll cycles.
Availability
Access to this temporary program will be as follows:
The program opens on Wednesday, January 19, 2022 and will close at 4 pm on Friday, January 21, 2022.
The program opens again on Tuesday, January 25, 2022 and will close at 4 pm on Friday, January 28, 2022.
We must close the program each week on Friday to allow time for the response team to process requests.
If you have questions about this temporary pay advancement or your obligations in the event of an overpayment, please contact your HR Business Partner with questions.
Additional Resources